ServiceNow’s Paris release: the enhancements you should know about

Written By: Dave Fisher
With ServiceNow’s latest software release, Paris, we can see many exciting new features and enhancements brought to their already market-leading platform.
I have taken some of my favourite additions and improvements to the platform, many of which ServiceNow have tailored to this years’ enterprise challenges, including improving productivity, elevating customer experiences and simplifying the ability to respond to escalations rapidly.

- Predictive Intelligence Workbench
This feature will empower you to deploy machine learning models with a simple step-by-step walkthrough and recommendations without writing a single line of code. Enable machine learning to drive broader adoption and resolve issues faster.
- Change Management enhancements
This will help to increase productivity with automated change approval based on a teams’ change success score – higher scores qualify for automatic approvals. Scheduling is also made easier through a simplified view of conflicts.

- Scenario Planning for Project Portfolio Management
This feature allows you to simulate multiple investment scenarios and compare them by looking at cost, benefit, strategic alignment, and team capacity. You can then select the best scenario and approve selected demand and resources.
- Resource Change Management
Resource planning is now simplified through new enhancements to the Resource Allocation Workbench; you can modify resource plans easily and substitute team members when individuals are no longer available.
- Microsoft Azure DevOps (ADO) and Atlassian Jira connectors:
Empower your teams to align their work on business objectives through bi-directional synchronization between ServiceNow and either Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps.
- Self-service business application workflows:
Allow application owners and enterprise architects to on-board new business applications in the CMDB. Decommission applications through self-service to efficiently manage and reduce software spend.

- Mobile app security:
ServiceNow mobile apps can now be configured by the customer to meet their compliance objectives, as well as having support for Edge Encryption and Domain Separation. The new security measures also allow you to comply with federal and internal security requirements.
- Actionable push notifications:
You can now accelerate response time by using your lock screen or Apple Watch to approve or deny requests quickly and easily. In addition to this, you can now customise up to three actions as options for each notification.
- Mobile enhancements:
Enhancements to the mobile experience allow you to simplify many tasks. Quickly find information with new filters for lists and maps, automatically cache data in the background for offline access and embed dynamic bar and donut charts in mobile dashboards.
Final thoughts
These above are just some of the many new exciting features available in the Paris release, and you can access the release notes here.
With ServiceNow operating an n-1 model (n being the latest release and n-1 being the previous release), we are finding that it is becoming increasingly important for customers to upgrade at least once per year to ensure access to the latest capabilities.
At Unifii, a ServiceNow Elite Partner, we can assist in every aspect of your upgrade journey and give you full confidence that your upgrade will be a success. With over 150 successful upgrades to date, we will ensure your upgrade is planned and managed from start to finish by a dedicated team of consultants.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do to help, please get in touch here.
Biography:
Dave Fisher is Head of Managed Services at Unifii. Dave leads the delivery of key services to Unifii customers and is committed to maintaining high customer satisfaction. Dave has been working in Service Management for over 20 years and has worked client-side at companies including Sky and Baillie Gifford.